Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-03-27-Speech-4-005"
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"en.20030327.1.4-005"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, in 2001, 14 EU Member States and Norway took the initiative of combining their research and clinical intervention efforts in the fight against AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in developing countries under the EDCTP programme.
The aim of this research programme is to speed up the development and evaluation of new vaccines and drugs through a partnership between Europe and some fifteen developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The Commission believes that it is in the Community's interest to be associated with an initiative of this kind, particularly against the background of creating the European Research Area. It proposes to do this by applying Article 169 of the Treaty, under which the Community may, in implementing the framework programme, participate in research programmes undertaken by several Member States.
The Commission's specific proposal is to provide for a financial contribution of EUR 200 million from EU funds, which is earmarked in the Sixth Framework Research and Development Programme. I would like to highlight the fact that this is a new departure in institutional terms, as this will be the first time Article 169 of the Treaty has actually been used. Setting up the programme of clinical trials, the EDCTP programme, is an example of putting the European Research Area into practice. This will provide real added value for Europe and for developing countries, and I would like to illustrate a few aspects of this.
This programme will enable us to integrate national and Community efforts by networking and pooling activities which up to now have been disparate and uncoordinated. The platform to be created should make it possible to transfer research results more rapidly so as to assist clinical development in developing countries, and I wish to emphasise that this will involve those countries' full participation. It will enhance the impact of public investment by means of a more coherent and targeted approach. It will enable us to assemble a critical mass of expertise and resources needed to carry out large-scale clinical trials by optimising the use of European research results, particularly those of public research. It will increase clinical development capacity in developing countries in terms of infrastructure and training.
The EDCTP represents a new approach which will bring industry and the public sector together in risk sharing and developing new kinds of partnership which are urgently needed to combat the disastrous effects of these diseases. Industry has a key role to play in all the activities under the EDCTP programme. The programme will finance research and development products for which industry can not expect any return on its investment. Public financing will make research more attractive to industry, without taking industry's place. The creation of new solid and effective public/private partnerships is a vital condition for the success of the programme.
To conclude, Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in the history of European research, we are in a position to adopt an ambitious programme which brings together the Member States' research activities and establishes a genuine partnership between Europe and Africa for clinical trials, a partnership which I hope will receive your support and thus get under way as quickly as possible. Let us seize this opportunity today and provide ourselves with the means to take full advantage of this first opportunity. We will earn the gratitude of researchers in Africa and Europe, and above all the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa, on whom these terrible diseases are taking a heavy toll."@en1
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